Cars We Remember: The legend Jack Kulp and those Rocket 88 V8 engines

Tuesday

Sep 6, 2016 at 2:13 PMSep 6, 2016 at 2:13 PM

Greg ZylaMore Content Now

Q: Greg you mentioned Jack Kulp in the article you did on the Tatraplan, the Czech-built automobile that I read in July in our area newspaper. I knew Jack well back in the day as I had purchased a 1949 Oldsmobile Coupe with a six-cylinder engine. However, I then bought a brand new Rocket 88 V8 Olds engine, some Jahns Racing Pistons and other good stuff and after acquiring all the parts, I had Jack Kulp put it all together for me. He put on a four barrel carburetor, headers, and I gave him a big LaSalle transmission to handle the power. Jack had to cut and balance the driveshaft to make it fit and when finished my Olds Rocket V8 was quite the drag racing car. Although I didn’t win many trophies because it was hard for me to shift, it had real power.Later, I sold the Olds and bought a ’61 Chevy Impala with a 283 Power Pack engine. Jack helped me with the carb again and headers, and he calibrated the distributor, too. We put 4:56 gears in it and I raced at Vargo, Langhorne, Atco and Island Dragways and it ran in the high 14 second range for the quarter-mile and I won many races with it. I used to also go with Jack when he was racing his beloved AA/Dragster, known as “The Outlaw,” and you might remember the name Bill Corcoran (my brother), Butch Newman and Dixon Blanchard. We all went to see Jack Kulp race. Thank you, Gene Corcoran, Dushore, Pa.A: Gene, Jack was one of my closest friends both personally and on the drag racing circuit. He was from the Penndel-Bristol-Langhorne area of Pennsylvania, where he indeed built a big name for himself in the early days of sanctioned drag racing and hot rodding. His reputation for making horsepower was so respected that he even had his name printed on the side of the famous Connie Kalitta “Bounty Hunter” dragster, where Kalitta would put an “X” next to the big name when he finally defeated them. If it had to do with big-time drag racing around 1960 to 1962, Jack Kulp was in the middle of it all on a national scope. Kulp had a love for those early Oldsmobile Rocket 88 engines, which appeared for the first time in 1949 and was General Motors first ever overhead valve V8 engine (along with Cadillac that year, too). Jack was able to build numerous Oldsmobile race engines that broke records galore, from the area dragstrips you mention to the sands of the Daytona Beach speed trials, where he drove to a record time Feb. 22, 1956 in a 1954 Olds coupe Rocket 88 at a NASCAR official speed of 130.909. This is one man who did it all, and then went on to defeat Mickey Thompson and Jack Chrisman in their twin-engine dragster in 1962 at the York U.S. “Big Go East’ with his single engine Outlaw dragster.Those early Oldsmobile V8s, meanwhile, found their way into many of Kulp’s A/Gas Supercharged Willys coupes, where people like K.S. Pittman (Jack’s best friend on the gasser circuit), “Ohio George” Montgomery, John Mazmanian, “Bones” Balough and Stone Woods & Cook were all forerunners of the Funny Car era. Specifically, the A/Gas Supercharged cars ran in the eight second range at over 150-mph back in 1959 to 1962 and preceded the modern-day Funny Cars, which first started to appear in 1966 in specially built tube chassis fiberglass cars. So in my mind, the Gassers were the first wild door slammers to ever compete on the nation’s dragstrips. By 1960, the Olds Rocket 88 had been replaced by the 354 and 392 Chrysler Hemi as the engines of choice in the gassers and also in Kulp’s dragster, which was bored out to 454-inches in 1962 and always were assembled by Jack himself with Isky Camshafts.Back to the early Olds Rocket V8s. These cars ruled the drag strips for many years in the early to mid-1950s. Thanks to that first 303-inch V8 in 1949 that produced 135 horsepower. The subsequent Rocket V8 evolved to produce 170 horsepower in 1953 and then underwent a growth spurt to 324 inches in 1954 at 185 horses. In 1955, the Olds Rocket developed 202 horses, and then 240 in 1956. To make a long story short, the Olds Rocket grew to 394-inches by 1959 putting out 315 horses. On the nation’s tracks, Lee Petty won the first Daytona 500 in a 1959 Olds Rocket, so by the end of the decade the Rocket V8’s were firmly in the record books.Kulp, meanwhile, moved his family from Bristol, Pa. to Rebuck, Pa. in the early 1970s and opened up Jack Kulp’s Transmissions, which grew from a single garage near Mandata, Pa., along Route 147 to a multi-building regional transmission distributorship. He dabbled in the quarter-mile sport for fun only, helping me in my personal Vega Panel Wagon funny car and countless other central Pennsylvania area sportsman racers. His laid back personality and very funny sense of humor resulted in some really memorable times for this scribe right up until Jack passed away from cancer Jan. 24, 2000. Prior to his death, he purchased a beautiful two-tone 1955 Oldsmobile Holiday 88 with a Rocket V8 returning home from the Indy 500. What a beauty it was and I’m sure brought back fine memories. As for those names you mention, Jack Kulp many times mentioned his “henchmen” and there is a fine Facebook site you can go to on the Internet which is overseen by his daughter, Nancy Jo (Kulp) Long. It’s called Jack Kulp’s Outlaw-Henchmen, so check it out; I know it will bring back some memories. (https://www.facebook.com/groups/jackkulpsoutlaw/)— Greg Zyla writes weekly for More Content Now and other Gatehouse Media publications. He welcomes reader questions on collector cars, old-time racing and auto nostalgia at 303 Roosevelt St., Sayre, Pa. 18840 or email at greg@gregzyla.com